Okemos School Board Expulsion Hearing Video Part 2 - Position statement by Student's attorney

Описание: This is the second of three segments of a video recording of a portion of a school disciplinary hearing before the Okemos Public School Board where the Okemos HS Administration was seeking the expulsion of a young, black sophomore student with special education classification for "misconduct." The hearing was held in open session and recorded at the request of Timothy and his mother.

In this segment of the contested case hearing the attorney for the student points out that the student and his mother have already decided to take him to another school district where he was welcome - which would be precluded if the Okemos School Board continued on to needlessly expell him from the Okemos School District. The attorney for the school district tried to explain why the school district did not comply with the statutory requirements for considering the behaviors of a student which could be attributed to a covered disability - such as AHDH - which Timothy had. The school administration had not fully testified accurately to earlier questioning about whether the student had AHDH which would have been a condition which made it improper to expell him without a plan in place for special education management to deal with behaviors (such as demonstrated by the student on the day the student was suspended pending explulsion hearing).

This segment ended abruptly when the attorney for the school board asked to speak with the attorney for the student privately and proposed a settlement offer which the student was actually going to accept in this matter. That settlement offer from the school's attorney was rejected by the adminstrators representing the Okemos high school and the hearing continued.

The hearing was held without any of the witnesses being sworn under oath regarding their statements of facts or representations "on the record" to the school board members who were present to deliberate the request by the school administration for expulsion of the student.

A quorum of 4 members of the Okemos School Board was present to hear the case and decide whether to grant the high school principal's request that the student be permanently expelled from the Okemos School District, which has only one high school. In addition, the Okemos School superintendent was present to assist the school board and to help the board in its deliberations about whether to expell the student.

The school district was represented by an attorney who presented the case in support of the expulsion. The student was represented by attorney Howard Spence, who appreared pro bono and represented the interests of the student and also the concerns of the Greater Lansing Branch Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union which has been focusing on addressing allegations of abuse of the school disciplinary process in the Greater Lansing Michigan area (where Okemos is a suburb) in an ACLU branch project entitiled the "School to Prison Pipeline."

The ACLU is concerned that some school districts are misapplying "zero tolerance" expulsion policy inappropriately and contrary to guidelines from both the state and federal departments of education when discharging or expelling students - especially young men of color.

The mother contracted for the videographer, and the video and audio are not excellent given the fact that the school district did not have microphones set up to professionally capture the discussion.

There is an introductory segment or discussion to this series of videos which provides a discussion and some analysis and insights from the attorney for the student. That introductory discussion is posted here on YouTube to provide insight (from the perspective of the student's advocate) about what was going on at the disciplinary/expulsion hearing, and about some of the questionable dynamics and personality disputes among the members of the Okemos School Board which became obvious during the open deliberations and decision making process which became evident during the 4+ hours that the hearing lasted. Readers are encouraged to view that introductory statement before reviewing the actual footage of the hearing itself.

The anticipation is that the video of this real, live hearing can be useful to help train student advocates in Michigan who may want to assist students being subjected to discipline and possible expulsion.